POI's Are Not Working

The first thing I would do is to make sure Alerts are enabled.

On my 2450 it's Tools -> Settings -> Navigation -> Automobile -> Proximity Points

While there make sure Audio isn't set to Off.

Also, in addition to jf's suggestions, only the speed cameras and redlight cameras will auto-alert and it's possible you haven't passed any of them.

For the other POI files you installed, did you use POI Loader in manual mode and set alerts for them? Using Express mode or manual mode without setting alerts will result in no alerts.

i have my own bmp, wav files for all of them. They works on my 3790LMT.
make sure you turn it on through settings.

Using the Rest stops as a example. If you are using the Rest Stops combined file http://www.poi-factory.com/node/6643 you will get alerts if you have set the alert distance in Poiloader using manual mode. I say this because I come down to FL every year and have always been alerted.The author of the file sets the location at the entrance for the rest stop location.Insuring you will be alerted.Again if you set the alert distance using manual mode. The other pois you listed such as redlights maybe you have not come to any yet. That will change in FL. Other pois if not located along the road of travel(appx 50-75 ft) you will not be alerted.I believe you have failed to set the alert distance for all the other custom pois. Redlight and Speed cameras will automatically alert you regardless of what mode you use poiloader in.But you do have to set the distance using manual mode for the others.

If you want voice alerts see http://www.poi-factory.com/node/25730 .Other wise you get the defult bong alert.

I am reading this as he had a fully functioning gps, all alerts were working. For some reason he did a hard reset and now they no longer function and he is on a 2000 mile road trip.

as onestep just wrote, that is how I interpreted the OP.

As such, all settings would have been reset to the default factory ones, and the OP did not say that he had re-activated any settings that might have been in effect just before the master reset.

if he did a hard reset it wiped out all user added things. poi's included.. he'll have to reinstall them

Hard reset doe not remove POI's.

It appears the OP(JimmyB9) has had the POI alert problem for some time now, His post regarding this some 1 1/2 years ago he never replied to the suggestions made.
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/34163

I suspect his problem is user error in loading poi files, either not properly naming them, not having sox.exe in the proper folder, or having double extensions on the files.

We can't help him if he doesn't respond and advise exactly what he did in loading the files.

Alerts are enabled.
Audio is on.
Thanx
Jim

POI files are: named correctly (no double extensions)
sox.exe is loaded in the proper folder
loaded with the latest POI loader on Windows 7.
I've had lots of problems with this unit since the day I bought it. e.g. "Favorites" I loaded in YEARS ago keep coming back. But we won't get into that now.
And, YES I've contacted Garmin and I might as well ask my cat to help me with the answers I get from them.
Jim

Thanks for getting back to us on this long-term problem you've been having. I firmly believe you can get audio wav alerts for your Custom POIs, that your device is not defective, and that there's just some issue in your procedure that's incorrect that we need to identify and fix. Stick with us and we'll work this out. You've asked this a few times over the past couple of years but not stuck with it far enough to obtain resolution with help from us here. It's better to stick with a single thread until resolved rather than start a new thread with the same issue every few months.

But first, more questions since an error in any single of the following areas will cause failure:

You are correct that Garmin will not help in this task since their official position is that wav files can't be used with POI Loader for custom audio.

In the thread http://www.poi-factory.com/node/30231 there was a special note by DorkusNimrod regarding installing files to some nuvi models. Are you following Dorkus' instuctions?

-if your custom POIs are loaded with audio alerts turned on, even with an error in using custom wav audio alerts, you should get the default "boing" sound for an alert. Please let us know if you get a boing for your alert or if you get no audio alert at all. The answer to this question may tell us where the error is occurring on your device and reduce the number of questions we have for you. In your initial post, you state that you have had no activated alerts--we need to know if you meant no audio alerts or no alerts (audio/visual/etc.) at all.

-double extensions: please confirm that in your computer's Folder Options that you have unchecked "Hide extensions for known file types."

-Please tell us the folder name in which POI Loader.exe and sox.exe are in. (Note: if you added sox.exe to a POI Loader folder a long time ago, you may have sox.exe in an older no-longer-used folder. A while ago, new POI Loader versions were installed to a folder different from earlier versions resulting in sox.exe not being in the folder with the currently-used POI Loader.exe.)

-When using POI Loader, do you obtain a "Successfully added xxxx POIs" message? Can you find and use the installed Custom POIs in your nuvi (WhereTo/Extras/CustomPOIs)?

-Where did you obtain sox.exe? If not from here at The Factory, you may have an older or newer sox.exe version that does not work with POI Loader.

-Where did you obtain or how did you make your wav files? There are specs needed for wav files for them to work in a nuvi as a custom audio alert.

-Did you just try to add custom audio to your custom POIs or did you add bmp icons as well? If icons were also added, do you see the icon for your loaded custom POIs or do you just see a little dot?

-Please confirm that you're using POI Loader in "manual" mode (not the default "express" mode) and that for the various POIs for which custom alerts are desired, that you manual checked the alert and set an alert speed or distance.

-Please confirm that the names of the csv or gpx files, the wav file (and the bmp, if installed as well) are identical except for the extension?

-You state that you have a file for Rest Areas. Is this the MrKenFL "Rest Areas Combined" or is it another POI file? Alerts may not work for files other than MrKen's file. What alert distance have you set for Rest Areas Combined--I use 15,000 feet, almost three miles. Also, your POI files for National Parks and State Parks will not give an alert unless you are located with a few tens of feet from the location identified as "the park" in the POI file. If you want them to give you an alert when you're within a specified radius of the park's POI location, you'll need to use TourGuides BUT LET'S NOT WORRY ABOUT THIS until we resolve your current issue.

In case I missed anything, please re-read and confirm that you're doing all that's required:

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/25730

Thank you CraigW for providing so much detail in helping Jimmy resolve his problem. Hopefully he will now be able to correct the issue.

@JimmyB9
To assist you with your other problem regarding reappearing favorites, you can do the following:

Look in the GPX folder on your Nuvi.
You can copy all the files in there EXCEPT THE CURRENT.GPX file to your computer as a backup.

Next delete all those files you copied from the Nuvi.
Now disconnect the Nuvi from the computer and reboot.
Once rebooted, go into your favorites and edit them. Remove all the locations you do not want to keep. Once completed, reboot the Nuvi. You now should see only the favorites you want.

Whenever extra files are present in the favorites folder, when the Nuvi reboots it will add those files to your current.gpx file. Even if you delete them from your Nuvi, if they remain present in the GPX folder, they will be added once again on the next reboot.
I hope I worded it simple enough to understand, not one of my better abilities.

CraigW and muell9k have given you excellent advice.

I have one more request of you.

Backup your unit now. If you need help doing so, please see

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/30394

Unless you have setup "TourGuide" style alerts, normal POIs must be on a road in your current route to get an alert.

Unless your Nuvi is different from my Zumos, a Master Reset does NOT wipe out POIs.

He did say in his original post:

I would hope that in 2,000 miles ay least 1 POI would appear.

(1) In the Custom POI’s Audio Alerts ARE turned on
(2) POI Loader and sox.exe are located in: C:\Program Files\Garmin\Loader\POI Loader.exe and BTW I uninstalled the loader and re-downloaded it and sox.exe (from The Factory) and re-installed both
(3) I’ve only loaded the .csv POI’s, I haven’t even tried to load any wav or bmp files so let’s not even worry about them right now.
(4) In the folder options “Show hidden files, folders and drives is checked
(5) Red Light and Speed are used in the Express mode and the others in Manual with a distance of 1 mile
(6) "TourGuide" style alerts have not been set up.

The statement "(5)Red Light and Speed are used in the Express mode and the others in Manual with a distance of 1 mile". You have to load them all at one time with poiloader.Is that what you are doing?Sounds like you load some in express then go back to manual mode for others.

The easiest way to check your pois out and see if they have alerts with them.Turn on gps and touch where to,then extras and touch custom pois last. You should see a list of your custom pois you loaded with poiloader.Now click on any of the files you have and select one poi from that category.It will show alert information for that poi on the screen.

Followed your instructions.
So far so good.
Thanx
Jim

....get audio alerts you must load a wav file. You will not get an alert unless you have audio files installed.

His earlier posts covers wav and sox.exe.Right now we just want to get the custom pois set up.

If they're still not working why are you saying "so far so good"?

Are the POI's present in your Extra's as per member charlesd45 instructions?

OK, we're underway.

Thoughts on your above statements:

2) On your Windows7 machine, POI Loader will be in the C:\Program Files\Garmin\POI Loader folder and in that folder, you will see POI Loader.exe and sox.exe, plus many other needed POI Loader files.

3) OK, so if you're only loading csv files to the nuvi, your alert sound will be a "boing," there should be a popup window with a text alert, and there should be a small dot on the map showing the location of the POI.

4) Yes, that's a good Folder Option to use, but it's different than what's needed to avoid the double extension issue. To avoid double extensions, you also need to uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types," then confirm that the csv files you have in your POI folder on your computer are just something like Redlight-Cameras.csv and not Redlight-Cameras.csv.csv.

5) As already asked by charlesd45, are you loading all five of your csv files in one fell swoop (the way I'd do it) or are you loading one at a time with POI Loader? POI Loader by default creates the file POI.gpi on your nuvi containing your Custom POIs. Unless you manually change the file name to something other than POI, you will overwrite all previously loaded POIs each time you run POI Loader. For instance, in your first post in this thread, if you loaded your five csv files one at a time with POI Loader in the order stated in your post and kept the default POI file name, the only Custom POI that will be on your nuvi will be Rest Stops. The other four will have been overwritten.

Now for the unanswered questions:

Are you using the technique advised by DorkusNimrod to avoid files not actually being written on your nuvi 37xx series due to an issue apparently unique to that particular series?

When running POI Loader, are you getting the "Success" notice before closing POI Loader?

Is the Rest Area POI csv file you're using the one by MrKenFL? Others may not give alerts. But with MrKen's file, if you drive down interstate highways, you will get alerts for upcoming Rest Areas--and given your travel distance, I expect you passed several in your current travels. When you say you have a 1-mile alert distance set, I assume you told POI Loader to use 5280 feet for the alert for Rest Areas. Right? And besides the Rest Area alerts on Interstates, if you're in Florida on city streets, it's fairly likely that you should have received some Redlight Camera alerts.

The biggest question I have now is the one indicated by charlesd45, which is how many POIs are actually on your nuvi right now? Please do this and report back: Tap WhereTo/Extras/CustomPOIs. After tapping Custom POIs, do you see five lines containing National Parks, Redlight-Cameras, Rest Stops, Speed-Cameras, and State Parks? If so and if you tap one of them (say, Redlight-Cameras), do you see a list of the nearest 50 Redlight Cameras?

One final new question. I'm not sure how the 3790 audio works. Is there just a single Volume Control or is there also an Audio Mixer (possibly tap Tools/Setting/Volume)? If there's a Mixer, it's possible that the alert volume setting is at 0 while the master volume for voice directions can still be heard.

We're looking forward to your next post.

HEY GUYS!!!!
It alerted me at a red light camera last night with a 'boing' and a tiny text message that you can't read while driving (Garmin style).
I'm going to leave it for the next few days and try it out in the area (lots of parks, etc).
Then IF I'M FELLING BRAVE I might even try to put in my own wav files and bmp's.
Thanx so much everyone for your help.
Much appreciated.
Jim

Well done, Jim

What did you do to get it to work?

Jim,
Did you ever follow my instructions in how to correct your favorites issue?

If you like, I can send you an email attachment with a working POI file for Rest Areas to test that have a custom alert.
Simply copy the file into your POI folder and it will work. I also separately will include the .wav file so you can hear it and know what to expect.

Just click on my user name and select contact.
I can't send attachments through POI Factory email so just provide the email address and I will respond.